Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction containing characters from the X-men world, which is trademarked by Marvel. I claim no ownership over any of the characters or locations that you may recognize and am making no money from writing this.

A/N: This is actually chapter nineteen of my fic Remy's Diabolical Plan. As it works nicely as a one-shot it was suggested to me to post it as such. I don't have plans to continue...unless I get like a bazillion reviews...which I highly doubt.

Warnings: A bit of language, some angsty-ness, and a very, very mild love making scene.

~X~

Wanda Maximoff hated a lot of things. She hated butterflies, glitter, the color pink, tiaras, and all manner of sparkly things. She hated sunny days, fluffy romance movies, her father, her brother, anything that made her feel trapped, the thirty seconds that she had to wait for her toast to be done, and dogs. She really hated dogs.

But she did like the rain. There was something about the rain that she loved. The sound, the smell, the way it looked, she loved everything about it. Whenever it rained she was happy. Every time the sky opened up and let down all that clean water, she didn't hesitate to drop whatever she was doing and go for a walk. Walking in the rain was a favorite past time of hers. It didn't matter if it was hot or cold outside. It didn't matter that sometimes she would freeze. In fact it made her love it more. When she walked in the rain, the water drenched her, made her cold, made her happy, and this made her feel alive.

It was a regular day, in Wanda's case. It was raining. She was walking. The neighborhood streets of Bayville were empty, it's inhabitants had taken cover when the rain had started. Not that it mattered to Wanda. She hated people. Most of them anyway.

But she wasn't alone. When she sensed another presence watching her, she halted mid-step and cast a suspicious look around her. The streets were still empty. The rain poured, drowning out most other noise except for a small whimpering sound from behind her.

Turning towards the noise, she saw what it was and her nose wrinkled in disgust. A dog. She hated dogs.

The mutt was huddled under a mailbox of a house that was labeled for sale. The thing looked downright pitiful, it's entire body shaking with cold and soaking wet, little droplets of freezing rain dripping off of it's fur. As it whined, she could see the puffs of air coming from it's nose and into the December air.

Still hating dogs, she had fully planned on leaving it there. It wasn't her dog. She didn't like dogs. She wouldn't even know what to do with a dog. But then the damn thing looked at her.

Instantly that song from that commercial popped into her head. The Sarah Mclachlan one. In the arms of the angel...

The dog's eyes seemed to get bigger and rounder, silently begging her with it's little furry face.

She closed her eyes, refusing to look. But that stupid song was still playing. She opened her eyes again to find that the dog was still looking at her. Big brown eyes were asking her for help. They were asking her to love him or her. All that dog wanted was love.

And that song wouldn't get out of her head.

Wanda realized that she had been had by a dog.

"Hey now," she didn't try to soften her voice at all. Hopefully the thing wouldn't like her. "You want to come with me or what?"

Instantly the rain soaked tail started to whip back and forth, big eyes looked up at her hopefully. Great. Just great. The thing actually liked her.

"Fine." she groaned. "Follow me then." She started to walk away, hoping that it was a stupid dog and wouldn't follow her. No such luck. It didn't just follow her. Instead it happily trotted up beside her, like a companion.

Once they arrived at her tiny apartment, she fully planned on calling animal control to come and collect him. She really did. But then when she opened the door, he walked in like he owned the place, went over to a corner and sat down, happily staring at her and wagging his tail back and forth. It had been a while since anyone else had been in her apartment and it was nice.

So nice that she might consider waiting five whole minutes before she called animal control.

Then for some reason she thought that he (she had checked) might be hungry. It shouldn't matter to her. She didn't like dogs, and she had to keep reminding herself of that. And it wasn't like she was rich, she didn't have any food to give this dog. With that thought, she went for the phone, deciding on calling animal control.

But then the strangest thing happened. The dog's tail stopped wagging. Slowly he looked up at her with the biggest pair of eyes she had ever seen. That song came to mind again. In the arms of the angel...

She slammed the phone back down.

Then she scrambled him some eggs without thinking twice about it. He ate every last bite in a span of two seconds. Worried, she scrambled more and he ate those even faster. By the time he had finished off the whole carton of eggs, she was getting panicked. How hungry was this dog? The poor thing probably hadn't eaten in days, maybe even weeks! Throwing open her cabinets, she grabbed a box of crackers. Then she realized that she was being had again. Feeling reproachful, she turned to glare at him, but the dog was ready for her. Already his eyes had taken on the innocent state and the song was playing...

And before she knew it she was hand feeding him crackers.

Once she had fed him, bathed him, and dried him off with her hairdryer (something that he seemed to really enjoy) Wanda realized that it was too late in the day to call animal control. At least she figured it was. Instead she settled down in front of the TV and her new friend curled up at her feet.

Sleepily she stretched and yawned, then halfheartedly picked up her phone from the coffee table. There was only about forty five missed calls, all of them being from John. But this was a big improvement over yesterday when he had called over a hundred times and left just as many messages. Speaking of voice-mail, the red blinking light on the phone indicated that there was a slew of new messages for her to listen to. Wanda hated listening to voice-mail. But she went ahead and dialed the number anyway, if only to get rid of that annoying blinking light.

"Hiya, sweetums," John's voice using her least favorite endearment was the first thing she heard. She scowled. "Waaaatcha doin?" There was a very long pause of absolute quiet where she thought that maybe he had hung up. Then he spoke again. "Sorry 'bout that, my burrito was done." His voice was now muffled by food. "Call me back when ya can. Love ya'."

There was a click that indicated the end of the message. Still glaring at nothing in particular, Wanda's grip tightened on the phone. She really wished John would stop using the 'L' word, but every time she told him to cut it out he only said it more. It had become a constant source of irritation for her over the past few weeks. He would say, "I love you." And she would throw something. Wanda hated the 'L' word. And she hated everything that word brought with it. John seemed hell bent on saying it every five damn seconds of the day.

After Apocalypse was defeated, everyone had gone their separate ways, pretty much. The Acolytes had fallen apart, her father had run off to God knows where (she didn't care), the X-men kept on with their normal goody two-shoes crap, and even the Brotherhood's attempts to cause mayhem were only halfhearted. She had never felt like she had belonged with any these groups in the first place, so when most of them felt apart, she was an outsider more than ever.

She couldn't be an X-men. The uncontrollable temper, fragile sanity, and the urge to cause destruction labeled her not X-men material. Plus, Wanda hated the X-men. Ever since Apocalypse, her father had attempted improvement in the dad department, calling every now and then and asking about her life. But even when playing the daughter role (or trying to) Wanda didn't fit in. There was too much pain there, it was going to take a lot of time to mend all that was wrong between them. That left the Brotherhood. There was no way in hell she would ever go back there. Four months ago she had walked into her room to find Toad with a handful of her underwear. And he was smelling them. After she had nearly killed him, (seriously, she had thrown him out of the upstairs window and he had ended up in a coma for a full month), the other guys of the house told her that she had to leave. They kicked her out. Like she was really going to stay there after that. Wanda hated perverts.

It was what she wanted, to leave that house. But once she was out, Wanda found herself in a pickle. She couldn't be an X-man, couldn't be a daughter or a sister or part of the Brotherhood. Finding work was hard—people around here had seen her on the news, they knew who she was. No one was keen on hiring a mentally unstable mutant.

Then everything had changed. It was at the small coffee place next to the entrance to the subway that she had been sitting for hours. She had chosen to sit there because she loved the smell, not because she liked coffee. Wanda hated the taste of coffee. Everything was quiet and depressing. At the exact moment where Wanda had been seriously considering driving off a cliff, the loudmouthed, rambunctious Australian had strolled into the place.

They had recognized each other. He had come over, even though she really didn't want him to. Wanda hated making idle chit-chat. But idle chit-chat wasn't what John had in mind.

"Wanna blow up an old bloke's car with me?"

Though she was surprised, Wanda's expression didn't change from it's normal glare. "Why are you asking me?"

A slow, toothy grin stretched across his face. "Cause, it'll be hot. You being the boss's daughter an' all."

She sent him a dirty look. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"C'mon, sheila," one of his hands stretched out to her, palm up, "it'll be fun. An' I'm gettin' paid for it. I'll go halfsies with ya."

That was all she had to hear. People desperate for money didn't pass up an easy enough opportunity to get it.

It turned out that John knew a guy. This was a system somewhat like what the X-men had. When the world was in trouble or there was a cat stuck up in a tree, people would call the X-men. When someone was mad, upset, felt threatened, or just down-right felt like it, they might call this guy, who in turn called John. When people called the X-men, they expected the problem to be dealt with in the right, legal, and squeaky clean way. When people called for John, they wanted things done dirty, they wanted revenge, didn't mind if it was illegal, and most of the time there was an explosion or two involved.

Wanda had found out later that the man whose car they had blown up that day had been involved in a hit-and-run case earlier that year, where he had left the victim in a full body cast for the better part of the year.

Everything had fallen into place so easily after that. The guy that John knew didn't mind having more than one mutant working with him. The clients paid so nicely that it was no time before she was able to get her own apartment and buy herself a hot meal. No one bothered her—which is exactly what she wanted. John was annoying but there was something about him that she found herself liking, despite telling herself to stop it and to stop it now. It could be that he was just as unhinged as she was. It could be that stupid, stupid grin. It could be that he genuinely seemed to enjoy, even encouraged, the casual abuse that she inflicted upon him. It could be that whenever they were together, blowing things up and destroying private property, she felt, for the first time in a long time, happy.

But she never let it show. Wanda was very careful of that. For someone who had rarely known joy in their life, it wasn't ok that she was happy. Because Wanda was the glass half empty kind of girl, she knew that no matter how happy she was now, that it could never last. All good things come to an end.

So she was careful. Cutting out the time she spent with John and taking jobs from their guy that she could do herself seemed like the smart option. This made things in her life more quiet, more depressing. More safe. Safe from being hurt.

Wanda hated getting hurt.

Then John had started in. He had called and called and called. Then when she hadn't answered or called him back he had left her a voice message that had her seeing red. It was short and simple.

"Wanda." He spoke calmly and seriously which was unordinary. "I don't know why you've started to ignore me. I reckon it's cause' I did somethin' wrong. Please sheila, whatever I did, I apologize. I...love you. An' I don't wanna lose ya. Call me back."

At first she had sat in shock and stared at the phone. Then she had hyperventilated. Then she saw red.

I love you? No one had ever said that to her. Why would they? No one loved her. She loved no one. That's the way things are. No one loved the mentally unstable, uncontrollable, abandoned, angry, self-hating person that she was. As far as she was concerned, there was nothing in her to love and no part of her that was worth it. John's words confused and angered her. Why would he say something like that? Was he trying to be funny? Did he think it was cute? Didn't he realize that she knew that he wasn't serious? Just that he would say something like that, even kidding, it hurt.

He might not know it, but he had hurt her, and all she had wanted at that moment was to hurt him back. She called him. He answered. That phone call had been short and had mainly consisted of her yelling at him, calling him every name in the book, and screaming out all of her frustrations of his stupidity at him. Thinking back on it now, Wanda regretted a lot of what she said. Though it hadn't seemed to affect John as much as she would have liked. He only had one response to her long tirade.

"I'm sorry if I hurt ya', sheila, but there's one thing ya' need to understand. I want you to know it, you need to hear my words and let them sink in and know that I'm not lyin' to ya. I love you, Wanda Maximoff. You might not like that, but it's true. I love you."

They hadn't spoken ever since. This prompted him to call multiple times a day like today and leave random messages. She rarely listened to them. Today, after meeting the dog and walking in the rain, Wanda found herself in a slightly better mood than usual. So she deleted all of the messages except for one and chose to listen to that. Two messages a day was her limit. She would only listen to two because, though she would never in a million years admit it to John, a small part of her enjoyed hearing his voice.

His voice filled the air. Her eyes drifted shut as she concentrated on the sound of it. "Wanda, I'm callin' to say goodbye. I can't tell you where I'm goin' or why, all I can say is this. Know that everything I've ever said to you, I meant it. I love ya, sheila. Don't forget me."

That was it. Wanda's eyes flew open at the same time that her pulse started to race. Goodbye? He called to say goodbye. Why? Where was he going? He was leaving town? He was leaving...her? Something seized inside her chest at the thought. John gone and never coming back. But that was crazy. She didn't love John...right?

Wanda was startled when she realized that she did feel something for John. She cared about him. And this was terrifying—simply for the fact that Wanda had never cared about anything.

Terror gripped her when she remembered his words. He was saying goodbye, he was leaving. Wanda hated when people left her.

Not bothering to give her decision a second thought, Wanda jumped from the couch and then tore from the apartment, forgetting her coat, shoes, and to lock the door behind her. After fumbling with her keys for a good ten seconds, she finally managed to hastily unlock the door to her car and start the ignition.

If any police officer had bothered to look her way, they would have seen that she was breaking about fifty different laws. John owned a house down on the lake so this was a few miles drive, plenty of opportunity for any cops to catch her in the act. But as it turned out, the streets were oddly empty, save for the few cars that she nearly plowed into when she had run that red light. Making it to his place in record time, Wanda raced up the driveway and slammed on the brakes when she was at the top, ignoring the flying gravel.

The rain had picked up again, pelting her in icy sheets, chilling her to the bone. Ignoring the pain, she ran up to the door in her bare feet and started pounding. The urge to cry was strong but she fought it, knowing it wouldn't do her any good. When had it ever? Wanda hated to cry.

After ten seconds of this, the maddening impatience won over. Opening the pounding hand, she held out her palm and the door made a tremendous show of ripping in half and blowing open, grains of wood exploding out and into every direction.

John was on the other side. His face expressed shock for the quickest of moments before he registered just who was on the other side of the obliterated door. His face immediately split into a grin.

"Wands, ya came to see me off! I knew you'd come."

Striding into house, dripping wet and barefoot, she didn't say a word as she put both palms flat on his chest and shoved. His back slammed into the wall, causing some picture to crash to the ground.

His response to her violence was only to grin wider, his eyes bright. "What was that for?"

"You're not leaving!" She growled, using the most commanding tone she could manage. Because he couldn't leave. He couldn't.

"Why not?"

"Because-" her voice faltered. It was a good question. Why couldn't he leave? He owed her nothing. She had pushed him out of her life. Had treated him like crap. Had told him not to love her. But now he wanted to leave forever and the thought made her ache somewhere deep in her chest. The thought of him gone, it physically hurt.

Something in her thoughts must have registered in her face because suddenly she was enveloped in a sheath of warmth. John's arm's were strong and tight around her, silently letting her know that he wasn't going to let her go. For once she didn't fight it, didn't fight him. It felt so good to give in to the temptation, to gently lay her head to his chest and hear the steady, thump, thump of his heart.

This felt safe. Wanda knew that it might be risky but just once, if only for tonight, she felt that it might ok to let herself be happy. Here in John's arms, it didn't seem as if any hurt could reach her, not here in this safe place. Vaguely she registered that her body was shaking, either from the cold or from something else, Wanda couldn't say. John quickly addressed this problem by walking her over, still in his arms, to the crackling fire alive within his hearth.

"Please don't leave," she begged, curling her frozen fingers into the front of his shirt, desperately trying to keep the tears from falling. "I can't say why not, I don't know. Just please don't, please."

The arms encasing her tightened. "Kay, love. Since ya' asked so nice-like, I won't leave."

The fire crackled, the rain poured, the wind howled. And as John held onto her, the panic and worry inside her slowly unwound and finally disappeared, leaving behind only what this moment now was making her feel.

And it scared more than the panic had.

Once everything was calm, she pulled away slightly, just enough so that she could see his face. Somehow, she knew it right then.

He hadn't lied. He hadn't been teasing. Because no one had ever looked at her like that.

Before her brain could stop her she was on her tiptoes, her lips pressing into his. John made some kind of sound in the back of his throat, something like panic. But as their lips moved, and some kind of odd warmth curled in her belly, the sound turned into something more like a relaxed sound, a satisfied sound. Was it coming from him again, or was it her this time?

What happened after that was something else she had never experienced before.

Laid on the soft rug in front of the fireplace, Wanda was forced to admit to herself once again that John hadn't been lying at all. Because this experience was nothing like she had ever thought that it might be like. John was slow and careful, taking time in every little thing he did. For every inch of skin that was exposed, there was twenty or so kisses that followed. He whispered things, asking if she was ok, making her blush, making her never want him to stop.

He was so easy and gentle with her, so attentive, that it shouldn't have made her feel anything else other than loved.

But Wanda had never been loved and had never felt loved. She didn't know how to feel loved. What John had done scared and confused her, this was something that she couldn't possibly understand and it frustrated and frightened her to no end.

As she laid in his arms listened to the content beat of his heart, Wanda remembered the promise she had made to herself. Tonight she would be happy. Just tonight. Tomorrow was a different story.

Waking up to the bright sun in John's arms and deciding to leave turned out to be harder than she thought it'd be. Something akin to alarm had taken control of her heart. Just like the night before when she couldn't say why she didn't want John to leave, now Wanda couldn't say why she had to leave. The last thing she wanted was to hurt John. But this couldn't work. He loved her. She couldn't love him back. Her heart was already damaged beyond repair, the capability to love was beyond it now.

This, she tried to tell herself, was much better for John in the long-run. It was better that he was hurt by her leaving him now, than to know that she didn't, couldn't love him back.

Slithering from his grasp, she quickly dressed and started to search for her keys.

"I knew you'd leave."

Hearing his voice, heavy with sleep and saying these words to her nearly broke her resolve. Trying to stay firm in her decision, Wanda clenched her fists and turned to find him still lying on the rug, using his arm as a pillow, the lower half of him covered by a thin blanket.

"W-what?" Damn her voice for shaking.

"Somehow I knew." He stared at her, unblinking. "I knew you'd leave, no matter what ya' said last night."

"What is that supposed to mean?" She tried to be angry, but even that was getting harder for her to accomplish. Something metal glinted at her from a spot next to the door. The keys.

"You can't stand it, can you?" He watched her with defeated eyes. "All I want is you, Wanda. But the moment anyone shows ya' love, you run. I get it, I really do. Your father left you and now you leave everyone else. The last time ya thought someone loved you-"

"Don't talk about it like you know anything!" Now anger had no problem forming within her. John's words hurt. On the level that simply talking about her father abandoning her hurt more than words could express, and on the deeper, more buried level that whispered to her that John was right.

"I'm sorry Wanda," he spoke wearily, and sat up without breaking eye contact with her. "But please know this. Just 'cause your father didn't want you, doesn't mean no one else does. You're killin' yourself, believin' that lie. I know it doesn't help. I know it doesn't make it go away. I know it doesn't change things. But I love you. I want you. If you ever gave me the chance, I'd never let you go, not like he did."

Their locked gaze lasted for only a moment more. Without a word she snatched up her keys and left.

Part of told her to go back. She could go back now and maybe they could make it work. The other, bigger part of her told her to keep going. Good things didn't last. John might love her now, but what would happen when he saw the deeper, darker parts of her? What might he make of the tattered remains of her heart? The fear of losing, the fear of being left kept her going. Those fears took control of her body as she started her car and drove away from him. She wouldn't look back. She wouldn't cry.

The dog roused from sleep when she shuffled into the apartment again. Tail wagging, he ran over to her, displaying an enthusiastic excitement as seeing her return. She patted it lightly on the head and walked over to collapse on the couch. Sensing something wrong, he came over, eyes curious. After observing her for a moment, he laid his head on her lap in a comforting gesture. Wanda welcomed his company.

Because more than anything else, Wanda hated being alone.